Marvin Jenkins

Longest 18 minutes of my life and still no answer🤣

I managed to get out with an 8 inch Dob in a small window of not quite dark enough, but racing against a moon rise. 
Embarrassed to say I started in the wrong constellation! Found M5 in five seconds and that drew my attention for quite some time.

Realising my mistake, I headed over to Ophicius and star hopped to M12 then a little jump to M10. Despite the Comet hunt I loved the Globs, could have stayed right there.

One little spiral movement and there was the Comet. No colour. But I could discern a brighter core with averted vision and what looked like a slightly curved elongation. I cannot say tail as it was right in the category of DSO smudges.

I always toast a new comet with a Drambuie and it has been some time.

Marvin 

Thank you very much for the extremely detailed reply.  I will look at everything you have written, and the links.

I must agree with you from your observations it was not a meteor shower.

Marvin

Just got a pic through the EP with my iPhone.

Wonderful Isn’t it. I have been out in the golden hour three nights out of the last four and it has been great to get back to back nights.

Seeing that change each day has been brilliant. Having the loan of an 8” Dob has also made a difference.

Marv

Bucket list destination right there. I live in permanent envy. One day perhaps.

Marv

Just remember to consume a large volume of patience. 
Guiding is a wonderful thing and wonderful when it it all comes together.

Be prepared for lost nights, but do not give up. Getting everything working just right is a challenge that could be called a right of passage.

As you can see from the replies on here you are in good hands.

Marv

A friend of mine who lives in a very dark area of northern France described a strange event in the night sky.

He is not an astronomer but has done Astro with me and is familiar with the constellations and compass points. In other words he can describe where he was looking.

At the new moon 2am he and his partner saw odd shooting stars that seemed to be more like small camera flashes every ten to twenty seconds in the sky. They saw about fifteen to twenty in total all in the same area of sky.

My gut feeling is that they were seeing shooting stars hitting us head on. The only meteor shower that is a candidate is the June Scutids.

Oddly the info I can found out about the source of this shower is an asteroid! Up until now I assumed that all meteor sources were from Comets.

Any further info from anyone who knows anymore would be most appreciated.

Marvin

7 hours ago, bosun21 said:

I am looking forward to the planets being back in the late evening sky and spending some serious time observing. You must have had decent seeing with 240x on Jupiter. I usually stay around 180x - 200x. Thanks for the report  

     Ian 

Actually the seeing was poor but the trick I am told with a Dob is to get the object in the edge of the fov and then let it move across the fov and hope you get those moments of clarity somewhere near the middle.

Keep adjusting keep looking and sure enough there will be moments of total clarity that happen right on sweet spot.

I never normally go magnification crazy, but this scope is new to me so I wanted to see how far I could push it. It coped very well considering. You have some good times coming.

Marv

Good luck Malcolm. Great starter choice as Bosun21 points out. I have been loaned one recently after using smaller newts on EQ mounts and it is brilliant. I am sure you will have great time and welcome to your second home.

Marvin

I managed to get out this morning with the 8” Dob. 
sooo nice to see the planets again. Didn’t try to bag everything just the obvious three.

Jupiter showing a surface shadow from Io. Great weather bands using a 10mm EP barlowed.

Saturn looked great. Cassini division popping in and out. Titan clear out on one side and on the odd occasion three little moons in one area close to the planets rings. Tethys, Dione and Rhea I am guessing.

Left Mars my nemesis to last to try and calm the brightness with a lightening sky. Moments of clarity showing a large dark area around the middle and a distinct whitening at the pole. Four years trying to get a Mars polar ice cap observation and finally managed it.

Marvin

Hello from SWFrance too. Tarn et Garonne, not far from Lauzerte.

B3 skies in your back garden are a joy, I pinch myself sometimes to make sure I am not dreaming.

I hope you get a scope sorted in time for the nights getting longer and darker.

Marvin

Rejoice you own a telescope. So many do not. Get it mounted and look at the night sky.

A BS Meter? Do FLO sell those?

I have no problem with alternative ideas, hence the thread. But you can drawn down avenue that turns out to be either the answer to everything or a complete falsehood.

Marv

2 minutes ago, Paz said:

I don't understand any of the maths but the suggestion that you can establish the mass of a thing by working out the dimension of one of its components and leaving many other  variables unknown seems dodgy.I

Does this discovery mean that I could now work out the mass of a block of cheese just by knowing the dimensions of a cheese particle?

Having said that there is a long history of ideas initially considered crazy that eventually turned out to be right. 😲

Especially that really weird one about everything going round the sun! After all that work with epicycles…..

Thank you Vlaiv I must admit that I had/have my misgivings about this man’s work. The problem I had/have is that I cannot follow any of the subject matter, it is way beyond me.
Furthermore, my friend who is a good guy thinks Mr Nassim is a genius even though he clearly doesn’t understand a word the guy is saying.

It seems that the power of YouTube can be a very powerful influencing power. My friend was adamant Mr Nassim had been published and peer reviewed and I had to explain to him what that actually meant. Having a website and lots of likes is not science. I was then sent a link to a YouTube video of the man with instructions to watch it to learn the truth!

Thank you again for all your investigations, at least I now know what I am dealing with.👍

Marvin

This is what my friend sent me.

You never know, a hundred years from now he maybe proved right. 
what I would like to know is whether the mathematics stands up to scrutiny?

Mathematics being the language of science I would like to know if what he is saying stands up as a mathematical model?

Marv

9 hours ago, andrew s said:

It's certainly not main stream as the link @vlaiv shows.  The key is he has no publications in serious peer reviewed journals. 

Regards Andrew 

That was also my own concern. My friend said “He has written papers that have all been peer reviewed” which seems to mean in this day and age lots of likes on YouTube.

Marv

22 minutes ago, Rallemikken said:

You can't tell how big the ocean is by measuring one drop of water. I generally don't trust science on this level. Much of it is just things they make up........

I am not sure what to think but I am sure if you had a standard for a drop of water it would be possible to work out the volume of an ocean. I am sure I have seen quotes for the water volume of the Jezero Crater on Mars, plus the amount of water that flowed over that huge falls on Mars

I wanted to know if this sort of ‘science’ which seems to to have some following whatever that means has a base in science. The guy Nassim seems to have an understanding of physics beyond me (which isn’t hard).

Just want to know if this is a genuine line of thought using mathematics or some  internet based self styled hero. I have no idea, and the equations baffle me.

Any ideas anyone, especially those that can try to explain how it ‘might work’

Marv

I have had a long standing conversation with a close friend, mostly based around the existance/birth of our universe. He recently sent me an idea by a guy called Nassim Haramein.

I cannot do the mathematical stuff but it is the idea that we can derive the mass of the universe from calculating the volume and surface of a proton, using the Planck Oscillation Number.

No need for Dark matter or energy and the quote is it calculates ‘The density of the vacuum on a universal scale’.

Can’t work out if it is just internet nonsense or there is something in it.

Marv

I looked online and as you say expensive. However you add up a tripod or pier mounted mount. The OTA, filters, camera, laptop and the head ache of getting it all working, I can see it is already in existence without a price issue.

Like I said, the future is already here. Would I buy one? No, I enjoy EP astronomy too much and need to scratch the itch of owning a big Dob and seeing what ever I can see with my right eye ball (much better than my left).

I have by coincidence recently met a person who has asked me to help with his beginner astronomy needs. I told him first to buy a good pair of binoculars to learn the sky and see the obvious stuff. He did do this, but at first complained that binoculars would not show his family and friends the night sky.

I realised that what he is interested in is entertaining. I get it. He has a great observing spot but it is going to be used to show family and friends the night sky.
But the astronomer in me is appalled which is my own problem.  He wants to know nothing about astronomy, the why the how and the where so I am going to suggest one of the systems to him (price is no problem).

I am not critical of these new systems, I am a big fan of the EEVA thread and what is done there. But I maybe very old school in wanting people to understand the night sky before using a credit card to show people the night sky.

Maybe I am old fashioned and this new way could be what brings people into astronomy, which can only be a good thing. Every young person is looking at a phone screen so that must be the future. The other big issue is light pollution which these robotic mounts cancel out.

Marv

Could be worse, my four legged nutcase utterly destroyed a prototype pare of Oakley sunglasses that were given to me by a friend in the cycling industry.

I had them for four weeks and she utterly ripped them to bits. I had to laugh in the end as when I worked in a bike shop in the UK the Oakley display had a gold irridium Blade lense that had been shot with a twelve gauge to show how tough they were.

Well twelve gauge dog did a whole load more damage than the gun. The Breed…. Boxer the destroyers of worlds.

Marvin

2 hours ago, Mike Q said:

I do think that this is the future, but I think of it as the future of amateur visual astronomy rather then AP.  With that said I do understand exactly why you say that.  

The big issue with this unit is...you guessed it....the price.  You get 4 grand in the unit alone.  My wife and I also invested in a 12 inch tablet that is dedicated only to it.  So we are up to 5k with this system.  

The images are good, will they compete with full on AP rigs and the dedication that people spend processing the pictures taken?  Not at this point. Will it catch up in the future..... possibly.  

This unit truly is plug and play.  Charge the battery and have the app ready to go, it is really just that easy.  

If you can afford Stellina or one of the other robotic telescopes by all means go for it.  

Very interesting bit of kit. What you say you have spent is not a huge amount in Astro terms. Five grand gets you in the door of AP and no further. A decent cooled camera is over a grand so well done for making the jump into the future.

1 hour ago, iapa said:

Gort: baringa

or are you thinking of this? : https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwie9qyvgKj4AhUaH-wKHQJgCfgQwqsBegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DuFWUn8k4PNg&usg=AOvVaw084DV7XdDjOIRmAp6qb8Pg 

It sure never sounded like your spelling!😂 Thankfully I never saw the remake with Reeves. I like the old school black and white version as it was much more Gort Lemon Merangai. Maybe I just like my cakes too much.

Marv